The Third Estate Sunday Review focuses on politics and culture. We're an online magazine. We don't play nice and we don't kiss butt. In the words of Tuesday Weld: "I do not ever want to be a huge star. Do you think I want a success? I refused "Bonnie and Clyde" because I was nursing at the time but also because deep down I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of "Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue" or whatever it was called. It reeked of success."

Sunday, January 20, 2013

A note to our readers

Hey --

Another Sunday.

First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:

Stony
Brook University in Stony Brook, New York is gearing up to host a
symposium on the issue. This will be their second one, their 2nd Annual
Scientific Symposium on Lung Health after Deployment to Iraq &
Afghanistan. The symposium will take place March 4th which isn't that
far away. If you'd like to register to attend, you can click here for the registration info if you're doing it by mail or by fax as well as a registration link if you'd like to register online.

Rosie Lopez-Torres is the executive director of BurnPits 360.
Her husband is Iraq War veteran Captain Leroy Torres who left the US in
strong health and had it destroyed by burn pits in Iraq. Burn Pit 360
(and the Torres family) have worked very hard on lobbying for a National
Registry.

I (Jim) told C.I. I'd grab an illustration and do the post noting the above symposium. I forgot. We'll note it in its own entry next week but, for now, it's included in our note to the readers.

This editorial is now above the TV feature. Didn't realize we had the wrong time stamp on it until now. Barack promised transparency but he's not even appointing IG's to oversee departments. And hasn't for his first term. Where is the outrage? Hey, Ralph Nader, why don't you call that out?

"The Wives of Nouri al-Maliki" is a term C.I.'s coined for the paid protesters who show up to swear Nouri is great. My apologies to three readers -- two Iraqis in the US, one an Iraqi in Europe -- Ty just informed me that three had written in asking that we repost C.I.'s writing on those 'wives.' If I had known earlier, we would have. How about next week? This feature focuses on their American counterparts, people like radio deejay Scott Horton and historian Gareth Porter who have spent years covering for Nouri al-Maliki. It's going to get a little harder to do in the coming weeks. Toby Dodge's book is going to be very influential.

Ty's always argued for us highlighting Chris Hedges book regularly by just picking a paragraph or two at random and doing a post with just that in an attempt to interest people who may not have yet read the book.

This wasn't planned. What happened? The 'intro' is tacked on. I didn't say it. We were talking about the e-mails and suddenly Ava and C.I. started taking notes after about 2 minutes. They realized this was a feature and nodded to Dona who poked me so I'd see that they were taking notes. Roundtables? We hate them. We love them when they're done but just the idea of mounting one is enough to make us cringe.

Ava and C.I. on Eve Ensler who really, really cares about the issue of rape and assault . . . when she can use it to promote Democrats. No Socialist has ever worked harder for Barack Obama than the craven Eve Ensler who pursued Hillary as if she had some radical, passionate crush on her and then quickly turned on Hillary. Maybe she did have a crush on Hillary Clinton? Maybe Hillary told her she wasn't into fat brunettes? Maybe that explains the vicious attacks Eve launched on Hillary? And as for her health problems, Ty points out, "God don't like ugly."

If we'd started the mailbag earlier, you'd have heard me suggest we repost something C.I. wrote last week. She said no but said we had to ("we have to") repost Mike's piece on Fringe. We agreed. Great piece, Mike.

And that's what we got for the week. We're about to go out and grab something to eat so if you're expecting something to go up right away at The Common Ills, don't. C.I. will be posting tonight but right now we're all getting something to eat.

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Third Estate Sunday Review

About Me

Jim, Dona, Jess, Ty, "Ava" started out this site as five students enrolled in journalism in NY. Now? We're still students. We're in CA. Journalism? The majority scoffs at the notion.
From the start, at the very start, C.I. of The Common Ills has helped with the writing here. C.I.'s part of our core six/gang. (C.I. and Ava write the TV commentaries by themselves.) So that's the six of us. We also credit Dallas as our link locator, soundboard and much more. We try to remember to thank him each week (don't always remember to note it here) but we'll note him in this. So this is a site by the gang/core six: Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I. (of The Common Ills).